Quick Start

Status: Current All CLAN commands follow the pattern:

chatter clan <command> [options] <file.cha>

Your first analysis

Given a CHAT transcript sample.cha:

# Word frequency count
chatter clan freq sample.cha

# Mean length of utterance for the child speaker
chatter clan mlu --speaker CHI sample.cha

# Mean length of turn
chatter clan mlt sample.cha

# Vocabulary diversity (D statistic)
chatter clan vocd sample.cha

Working with directories

Process all .cha files in a directory:

chatter clan freq corpus/

Output formats

Every analysis command supports text (default), JSON, and CSV output:

chatter clan freq --format json sample.cha
chatter clan mlu --format csv sample.cha

Filtering

Restrict analysis to specific speakers, tiers, words, or utterance ranges:

# Only the CHI speaker
chatter clan freq --speaker CHI sample.cha

# Exclude the investigator
chatter clan freq --exclude-speaker INV sample.cha

# Only utterances 10-50
chatter clan freq --range 10-50 sample.cha

# Only within gem boundaries
chatter clan freq --gem "story" sample.cha

See the Filtering chapter for the full guide.

Transforms

Transform commands modify CHAT files and write the result:

# Add fluent output tier
chatter clan flo sample.cha

# String replacement from a rules file
chatter clan chstring rules.cex sample.cha

# Reorder dependent tiers
chatter clan tierorder sample.cha

Format conversion

Convert between CHAT and other formats:

chatter clan elan2chat recording.eaf
chatter clan praat2chat recording.TextGrid
chatter clan chat2srt sample.cha

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